Johnnie had showed Mitchell how to use a knife and its accompaniment of forks when they were properly set—an etiquette she rejected with a vengeance before she had the opportunity to take it, independently, anywhere special. That was ... some time ago, when she was a girl, a clean fresh laundered correct and bright package of girlhood with a craving and exuberance in her, a hot pulse and a heart ready to catch fire. Mitchell once imagined he was the match set against her fuse but it was a bigger flame by far that set her off. She self-combusted with the nation, an immaculate conflagration, an electric guitar searing the “Star-Spangled Banner” like a laser knife. Our brilliant generation, Mitchell thought—we made music and we made war in the jungle, and sometimes it wasn’t easy to tell the difference. Kids are better killers than they are lovers. One takes practice, the other doesn’t. One looks at the world and believes it is as simple to change as a television channel.
What finally identified the limits of their precocity was that they had no plan for surviving themselves, they were kamikaze pilots cheated out of their best moment, left without a war, without patriotism, without homes, marked indelibly as footloose children, Hansel and Gretel hiking farther and farther into an infatuating darkness of diminishing knowledge, failed faith. Girl entering the world, girl leaving the world, girl trying to circle back. Mitchell did not flatter himself as being that world, only its channel marker, if that; its sideline of involvement. He dropped the magic spoon onto the table, demoralized. It was bad to dwell on the outdated fashions, the skewed mental habits, of those years with Johnnie, tempting himself with a pose of exile and betrayal. He told himself he was less fraudulent than that, more serious, nothing being more insipid than to cry over growing up, though the impulse was real enough. He didn’t want to give into it, and for what he knew was a selfish—and therefore, inexplicable—reason, he didn’t want Johnnie doing such a good job warming up the tourists, all humanity’s hostess.
“You didn’t take my advice.” She had whisked over to rouse him. “You were supposed to jolly up.”
“I’m going to leave. I’m tired. It just hit me.”
She snatched her purse from the table and pulled him to his feet. “Oh no you don’t,” she said. “You’re needed here.”
“Look, I’m not up to it.”
She led him through the tables, whispering in a droll voice. “I go away for five measly years, and you won’t stop sulking.”
Mitchell dragged his steps, his feet telling him to become an immovable object. In front of them sat an obese woman, her pink bloated arms hanging out of a garish orange and yellow muumuu, observing their progress with beaming optimism. “I know I haven’t lost my sense of humor,” Mitchell growled in Johnnie’s ear, “because I’m not strangling you in front of these people.”
At the far end of the ballroom was a bar, unmanned. As they went behind its counter Johnnie squatted down, out of sight to the customers. “Mitch, get down here,” she commanded. He hesitated—they’d squabble on their heels like two merchants in a bazaar—but he looked at the restaurant looking at him and sank, kneeling beside her. She unclasped her handbag and fished through it.
“Second wind?” she asked.
Drugs so overtly used in peacemaking were a bubble, a sphere of transparent fellowship that formed around you and lifted you off the ground until pricked by the needle of passing time, dropping you from that high place back to the unforgiving crust of where you began, everything the same—or worse—as you left it. Mitchell wasn’t even very fond of cocaine; it made him feel metropolized, under the influence of a crucial desire for fulfillment, a seeker seeking to accomplish something wonderful but of absolutely no importance or merit. Still, he reasoned, the day had been extraordinarily long, especially tagged on to yesterday, the day before, the day before that, the month, the year. Rest or recreation, he had to choose. Johnnie dipped a fingernail into a tiny plastic packet, her eyes sewn shut but tearing open when she had finished. White dots of powder stuck to her lip and Mitchell brushed them off.
“I think,” she said, “that we have to pretend.” Her forehead nuzzled against the top of his arm.
“Pretend what?”
“That we’re meeting each other for the first time, and it’s a little awkward, and here we are, after a rocky start, both of us beginning just a little bit to enjoy each other’s company, and fantasizing about how nice the rest of the night might be.” She raised her head, eyes blazing, to see what Mitchell thought of the idea. “Don’t you think it will work?”
“I don’t know. I was thinking the same way when I first saw you at the airport.”
“Well, come on then,” she urged. “Besides, Tillman’s going to stand the house to a round of drinks. Somebody’s got to mix them.” Johnnie scooped with her fingernail, sprinkled sorcerer’s dust. Mitchell grimaced at the pain, a freak arctic wind cutting through his busted nose and then the spectacular hush, energy flowing exactly like an electrician had been at work inside him, rewiring the old house, floodlights snapping on inside his skull and a new attitude, one with a top hat and tap shoes and kazoo, retiring the act of infinite propriety. His eyes watered, a diamond-hard numbness drained into his front teeth. Good-bye, social hypochondria. The spirit of performance had made itself known.
“Here’s the list,” Johnnie said, ripping a sheet from the pad she took from her blouse pocket. Twenty-three rum punches, fourteen pina coladas, thirteen scotch and sodas, four scotch on the rocks, a vodka martini straight up, three lime daiquiris, one Blue Hawaiian, three lime squashes, eight seltzers. Beer.
“What in the fuck is a Blue Hawaiian?”
“Here’s your chance to make a real difference on this island, boy,” Johnnie said, rolling back off her heels in a laughing spasm. Mitchell thought he should help her sit up so he took hold of her, a lifeguard’s hug, her rib cage heaving under his palms. She quieted at his touch and studied his face.
“We’re having fun,” she finally said.
“Sure, sure. Old times.”
“I mean it.” Her eyes flashed provocatively but she shifted to her knees. “Ready to stand?” she asked, but there was no opportunity to stay put because they were already surfacing, Johnnie tugging him so that Mitchell had to go too, gnashing his teeth. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she addressed the dining hall, all eyes turned on them in anticipation. “This lousy son of a bitch martyr won’t kiss me when he’s given the chance but at least he’s agreed to be our bartender.” Several diners clapped. She scooted out from behind the counter back to the kitchen, leaving Mitchell too stunned to react.
As long as Johnnie was in the vicinity, he mused, his life was headed for a state of throwback, retrograde impurity, capricious fluctuation of the emotional gyroscope. What was there to do, though, but to uncap a beer and go to work. When Johnnie and Adrian reemerged through the swinging door they had created a blithe alliance, Adrian pixiating, undoubtedly reformed and stirred to duty by the fast medicine in Johnnie’s clutch, bewildering the community of diners with her newfound willingness to serve. In sympathy for their original expectations upon coming to Rosehill, and the damage those expectations had undergone, Mitchell blended a silky punch with twice the overproof rum the recipe varnished into the countertop intended. A good rum punch was the wiliest of cocktails. It was the drink to which teetotalers relented because of its healthy tropical image, all the ingredients of a vitamin-ladened breakfast juice therein, the uncommon flavors of passionfruit and nutmeg, bitters and lime that imbued enough natural ping to disguise the devilish proportion of alcohol in the glass. A superb rum punch had all the characteristics of merciful execution. It assumed no virtue in going slow so that the victim might pause to lament what was being lost, and it valued stealth, the surreptitious wham: the victims of a superb rum punch never knew what hit them. They were swept from one shore of reality to another more liberated coast, a new world where they had temporary license to do absolutely anything that entered their heads, play any scene or voice any pronouncements t
hat suddenly they fancied. This, Mitchell thought, having another slug from the plastic bucket he had utilized, was a very good if not excellent cane punch and should be approached prudently, especially on an empty stomach. He poured twenty-three orders and the bucket was still almost half full, allowing for twenty-one extras, which he also measured out. When the women arrived to collect the drinks, they found him slopping piña into colada, making a frothy mess.
“What are all these?” Johnnie asked.
“Deliver one to everybody in the room except the very young.”
“Not everybody wanted a punch.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he retorted. “Not everybody wanted a kiss either.”
“Mitchell,” Adrian said, “thanks for volunteering to do this.”
Mitchell looked down at this tiny kite of a person and told her he didn’t volunteer, he was appointed, which was the worst thing that could happen to anybody. “There was so much grumbling out there I decided to go for a first strike,” he said, shoving glasses forward two by two. “Get them before they get us. You left no alternative.”
Apparently this was a woman who insulted easily. She stiffened, closed her eyes and fluttered her lids, a neurotic habit Mitchell had noticed at the airport. She delivered two glasses of punch to the nearest table but didn’t return for more. He emptied a bottle of white rum into a sticky pineapple brew.
Johnnie cruised away with another tray of cocktails. When she looped back, she said, “Adrian’s upset, so I don’t think you should blame her for the impression she’s making.”
“Why not?” Mitchell protested, remembering Adrian’s critical assessment of him at Brandon Vale, her superior tone in the terminal.
“She’s feeling she’s been imported to Rosehill as a handmaid. Tillman worked her hard all day, made her change sheets, scour shower stalls. She’s mad.” Johnnie raised one eyebrow and reversed, sending out faint vibrations of the effect of her own bumpy arrival, his reluctant welcome. “Off again,” she chirped, her tray replenished with its cargo of goodwill. Bending down to look for club soda, Mitchell discovered the restaurant’s stereo and album collection hidden behind a sliding panel. Reggae was what was called for, some subversive atmosphere in the place. He lowered a record on the turntable and set the volume midway. Conversations in the dining room hall rose gaily, laughter rippled here and there. A man in a yachtsman’s blazer stood up to salute Johnnie with his bottle of beer. Johnnie glowed with exercise and camaraderie when she harvested the last of the drinks.
“What are you doing when you get off work?” Mitchell asked, straight-faced.
“Sorry,” she said, “my boyfriend’s picking me up.” She took a step backward but canceled it, resting an elbow on the bar, and spoke confidentially. “He’s one of those guys who rushes home to ball five pounds off me. The next day I have to go out and buy all new clothes.” She winked and paraded back into the tables, swinging her hips.
“Glad to hear you’re being taken care of,” Mitchell muttered, never accustomed to women speaking brazenly. At five pounds a session she had better go easy or there’d be nothing left to penetrate. A light rum and tonic in hand, he abandoned his post for the kitchen to forage for food. Hunger made him stare at the diners as he trudged past, envying the plunge and stab of their forks. Little bunnies, Mitchell thought drunkenly, in God’s own clover. Watch out for that old bone-crusher, the serpent in the cane. He could be hiding anywhere, flexing his maw, anticipating just such a treat as you.
Chapter 10
Tillman hovered over four blue flowers of flame, deciphering the order chits attached by fishhooks, like laundry, along a string, his spatula and wooden spoon poised above frying pans and caldrons smoking on the stove. He reminded Mitchell of a symphony percussionist reading his score, informed by the sheet of notes and symbols to stay alert for further banging. Bites of hot grease speckled his forearms, flour whitened the front of his jeans, and his tee shirt displayed blotted samples of the evening’s fare. He flipped and stirred, measuring lumps of rice onto plates which he then smothered with a brownish stroganoff. Nothing about the manner in which he performed suggested the adverse condition of a man under the stress of an impossible enterprise. Instead, when he eventually noticed Mitchell was standing behind him, Tillman grinned more brilliantly than the old copper tiles banded along the wall. He raised his utensils like scepters, blessing all who entered his kingdom.
“Aha!” Tillman said. “Just the guy I wanted to see.”
“I was hoping I was the man you wanted to feed,” Mitchell replied. A steamy surf of spice-bearing molecules pumped out from the pots on the stove. Mitchell’s mouth watered obscenely. Starvation was turning him into a visionary. He kept seeing a steak with his name written on it in béarnaise.
“Chickens,” Tillman disclosed. “And pigs. Cows and ducks. Herb gardens. Vineyards. Tomatoes, potatoes. Crisp leafy lettuce. Shallots and mushrooms. Get this nation on the move, Mitchell.”
“Don’t talk to me about chickens,” he answered morosely.
“People are clamoring for them, buddy. Where can I buy more chickens?”
Mitchell found a dirty fork and speared a piece of Spanish mackerel from one of the frying pans, cramming it into his mouth before it had a chance to cool, rewarded with a burned tongue.
“Hey—don’t pick.” Tillman scraped the last gummy grains of rice out of a cast-iron kettle, dribbled sauce onto a plate and floated a skinny fillet. “There’s not enough to go around as it is.” He asked if Adrian had posted the Closed sign on the entrance door. Mitchell didn’t know.
“Come on,” Mitchell needled, “don’t you have a bit of meat I can chew? What about a bouillon cube to suck on?”
“Nope.” Tillman was at an impasse; the food had run out and there were two more orders left to fill. He redistributed clumps of parsley, a garnish that for some reason never failed to be available in the markets. The plates still looked barren as a prisoner’s dinner so he hacked a solitary pineapple into thick doughnuts and added these beside the niggardly entrées. It didn’t matter, Mitchell told him, since his customers were reaching a stage where forks wouldn’t stay in their hands.
“What’s happening out there? How are the girls doing?” Tillman twisted the stopcock on the bottle of gas that fueled the stove; Mitchell watched the fire sputter and retreat as if he had been deprived of his basic human rights. Adrian had forgone charm, he said, and seemed to think that everyone had gathered in the restaurant for encounter therapy; to ease the mounting aggressions, he had mixed a rum punch so strong it would make monkeys bark.
“Well ... she’s teed off at me.” Tillman compressed his lips and, with a butter knife, dug at a smudge of paste stuck to his tee shirt. At that moment Adrian’s backside bumped open the door, filling the kitchen with a surge of cackling and bass-heavy music. Muscling a plastic tub of dirty dishes, she wheeled around and glared at the two men as though they were a pair of worthless sloths. The tub crashed down on the sinkboard; straining theatrically, she hoisted the tray Tillman had newly set and was gone without a word, pounding open the door with a thrust of her boyish hips.
“You don’t say,” Mitchell said.
“Yep, but I don’t see what I can do about it,” Tillman admitted, going to wash his hands with a lump of soap resembling processed yam.
Mitchell probed the leftover debris on the plates Adrian had bussed. Flecks of gravied rice, morsels of fish attached to gray rubberish skin, french fries with bites taken out, gum wrappers, cigarette butts and cigar ash, dirtied napkins, toothpicks with bloodied points. He ate whatever appeared digestible. “You’re a cruel bastard, I hear,” he said with his mouth filled with waste.
“Oh? You’ve heard reports?”
It was a masticated fray of gristle that finally woke up Mitchell’s self-disgust. “Yes,” he answered Tillman, straightening up. “You are accused of exploiting affluent white women, luring them to this tropic sweatshop with lies about sunbathing, sailing, and other deceptions.�
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“I’m afraid what you say is true.” He ran hot water into a square aluminum sink. Mitchell handed him grease-smeared tableware. “As long as you don’t let them unpack their luggage and settle in, you can get a lot of work out of them. Once they set foot on the beach though, Wilson, that’s it, they’re not good for anything.”
Mitchell had his eye on a dusty can of black olives, high up on a shelf. “I approve of your policy,” he said. “In fact, why don’t you just take Johnnie and keep her, put her to work.”
“Now there’s a helpful woman,” Tillman noted, his arms submerged under a film of ugly suds.
“Can I have those olives up there?”
“Help yourself. Whatever you can find in the refrigerator too.” Tillman explained that they could have handled the evening’s crowd but his local girl bailed out right as the restaurant opened. She and Adrian had a disagreement over how the tables should be set and who would waitress which stations. Adrian scolded her; she took a hike.
Mitchell opened the can of olives and inspected them. They looked like small pickled testicles, and tasted rotten. He threw them in with the trash and went over to the ancient Kelvinator, its surface hammered with rusty dents, splashed with grime. He clucked at Adrian’s New York temper. She had taken a lesson in what an islander’s feet were for—to retreat from shit and into misery.
Swimming in the Volcano Page 17
